


Poison & Wine

by LaMaupin



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:13:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3151877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaMaupin/pseuds/LaMaupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To say Asami is disappointed when Tonraq tells them that Korra isn’t with him is an understatement. To say she is heartbroken feels overdramatic, but is closer to the truth than she wants to admit.</p><p>(A part of her, a deep down part of her she is ashamed to admit even exists, is relieved when Korra doesn’t get off the ship with Tonraq. Because three years is a lifetime and she’s afraid that Korra will be a stranger.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poison & Wine

Some days it feels like three years have flown past. Other days Asami feels like she’s been caught in the endless loop of design, plan, build for an eternity. She’s not sure which days she prefers because she’s not sure if the guilt of feeling like she’s moving on with her life, like she’s not missing Korra enough, is preferable to the sense that she hasn’t done enough, will never do enough, to make up for the scars her father left on the city.

(Republic City feels empty without Korra, and no matter how many roads she builds or statues she raises she can’t seem to replace the vivacity that Korra brought to the city. Whenever the press refers to it as her city she want’s to correct them: to tell them that no matter how much of it she builds and rebuilds Republic City will never be hers. It belongs to Korra, heart and soul, and it has since the day she arrived, but her protests always catch in her throat and die on her lips, because it feels too much like admitting a shameful secret.)

She’s all too happy to leave her mansion in the care of Mako and Bolin’s family and move into one of her newly renovated buildings. The mansion was always too big for her and she wants to be closer to her office anyways. She hopes this will reduce the number of nights she ends up sleeping in her office, falling asleep at her desk because working is easier than feeling. It does not.

(The reasons she cites for moving, both to her friends and to herself, do not include the fact that the mansion is haunted with the ghost of her father’s betrayal, and she doesn’t want to live with that anymore. She has enough pain to distract herself from without wondering if she ever meant anything to him at all whenever she walks past his study.)

The letter changes everything. Asami has read it so many times she knows it by heart, but she still reads it whenever her doubts threaten to overtake her. She finds comfort in the familiar script, and while it makes her incredibly sad for her friend, it gives her a small semblance of hope that maybe, just maybe, her feelings aren’t as unrequited as she thought.

(But her doubts are never too far off, and sometimes she finds herself wondering if she hasn’t overanalyzed the whole thing. Reading between the lines is always dangerous, and while her friendship with Korra has always been built on a mutual understanding of the things they left unsaid, she is afraid that she is being selfish and only seeing what she wants, not what Korra needs.)

To say Asami is disappointed when Tonraq tells them that Korra isn’t with him is an understatement. To say she is heartbroken feels overdramatic, but is closer to the truth than she wants to admit.

(A part of her, a deep down part of her she is ashamed to admit even exists, is relieved when Korra doesn’t get off the ship with Tonraq. Because three years is a lifetime and she’s afraid that Korra will be a stranger.) 

She doesn’t quite know why she agrees to see her father again. She tells herself the stack of unopened letters has finally gotten to her. She fully expects to tell him to stop writing to her and then never see him again, but then again, she never has been good at letting people go.

(On the drive back from the prison she thinks about how unfair it is that she has a whole stack of letters from her father and only a single one from Korra. She wonders why everyone keeps leaving her. Her mother, Mako, her father, and now Korra is off doing who knows what, who knows where. She wonders if maybe it’s worth trying to hold onto what was her most important relationship for most of her life.)

When she hears Korra is back in town and she gets an invitation to lunch with her and Mako, she’s not as happy as she expected to be. She attributes the growing pit in her stomach to nervous excitement, three years is a long time to not see your best friend after all.

(She knows that things can’t be the same, not after everything Korra’s been through, and she accepted that a long time ago while standing on that dock watching Korra sail away. But for three years she has held onto the hope that the important things will still be there. The way they move in sync without even thinking, the way Korra’s smile lights up her whole face and never fails to make Asami feel better, the comfortable silences and rhythms that inhabit their time together. And the thought that those might never be a part of her life again terrifies her.)

Asami can almost convince herself that nothing has changed. It feels just like old times, like they can pick up where they left off, they can go back to before Zaheer, before anything was complicated or uncertain. But the world has a way of interfering, as it always does, and it is quick to bring the ever looming threat that is Kuvira to bear.

(And even if there were no Earth Empire agents to interrupt their reunion, Asami isn’t sure she could convince herself everything was the same. There’s an undercurrent of tension to her and Korra’s interactions that wasn’t there before. She tries to keep herself from hoping that falling in love with her best friend maybe wasn’t the stupidest thing she’s ever done, because a small part of her wonders if that hope will only make it more painful when Korra inevitably leaves again.)

The weeks since Kuvira’s defeat have been harder than she could have anticipated. The depth of her grief over her father’s death surprises her, given how recently she had entertained the guilty thought that she wouldn’t care if he died. Varrick and Zhu Li’s wedding feels like an extravagance against the backdrop of the ruined city, but she has to admit that it is a nice change of pace from yet another cycle of planning to rebuild the city.

(Asami’s heart swells every time she see’s Korra smile, because it’s been so long since she’s seen genuine happiness on her friend’s face. And then Korra is suggesting a vacation, just the two of them, and everything changes. She feels the collective weight of the past three years lift, and she finally let’s herself believe that she wasn’t crazy, that her best friend just might love her back.)

And now she is holding Korra’s hand as they walk into the spirit portal. Asami can hardly believe it’s actually happening. And for the first time in a long time she feels free.

(And for the first time in an even longer time she lets herself think that this time might be different. This time might be forever.)

**Author's Note:**

> The structure of this fic was inspired by the song Poison & Wine by The Civil Wars, so titling it after that felt appropriate.


End file.
